# Instructing agents from my bike

> Two months with the Pebble Index

Published: 2026-10-25
Canonical: https://iamtomwhite.substack.com/p/instructing-agents-from-my-bike
On this site: https://www.iamtomwhite.co.uk/notes/instructing-agents-from-my-bike

I love cycling. Road, gravel, commuting. Love it. Over the years I've realised how important it is for my mental health.

But even when trying to escape and switch off, my mind wanders. Loads of thoughts and ideas spring to mind, and for years I've wanted a way to capture thoughts on the bike without having to stop and write them down. That's why, when I saw the [Pebble Index](https://repebble.com/index), I thought I'd have to give it a try.

## What it is

![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1at3!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffce6005f-a90e-45de-9aa4-bc6281cd712f_1920x1080.jpeg)

The [Pebble Index 01](https://repebble.com/index) is a connected ring with a microphone to record your thoughts. You press the button, speak, and let go. I pre-ordered earlier in the year and I've been testing it out over the last couple of months.

What I was most interested in was the promise to be able to automate things off the back of the recordings you make: generating reminders, calendar events and integrating with other tools via MCP.

So far it's shown real promise.

## How it's wired up

The ring sends your recording to the Pebble app, which transcribes it using its own cloud service. From there I've wired it up to push a webhook (not MCP as I originally expected) through a Cloudflare Tunnel to [Dot](https://www.iamtomwhite.co.uk/notes/dot-before-dots), my assistant on my Mac. A general agent in Dot then decides whether to handle the note itself or pass it to a specialist (coding, finance, the house and so on), and the result turns up as an unread chat.

## An example: From voice note to deployment

In early October, I was out on the bike and pressed the ring: _"For the coding agent, I want to add a notes section to my portfolio… styled the way I have it through the rest of the site, but sourced from my Substack account."_

The general agent saw "coding agent" and passed it on. A minute later the coding agent had read my site's code, found where the nav lives, worked out that Substack's RSS feed could be the data source without needing an API key, and come back with one question: should it just list my posts, or show the full posts on my site? Then it stopped and waited.

I got home, answered its question and responded to a couple of follow-up questions, and it generated a local version I could review. Ten minutes after returning, I typed "Deploy" and it was live.

Most of the work had already happened before I got home. My part was responding to a couple of clarifying questions and one word.

## Does it work?

On a typical ride I come back with four to eight voice notes. Some are small, like a task I want to remind myself about. Others are bigger, like a whole new section for a website or a blog post I want to write. The routing has been reliable: the notes section idea above went straight to the coding agent without me doing anything.

The ring itself is a different story. It's a gadget I put up with. I don't like wearing jewellery and I'm aware of it on my finger the whole time, so I only wear it for solo rides and commuting. Beyond that, the ergonomics are good. I've previously tried getting this concept to work using my Apple Watch, but you need two hands to record, which isn't ideal when riding. For the Index, you just need to hold the button while you speak, and doing that while cycling works perfectly. The other thing is that having it on your finger means you naturally cup your hand around the mic, which shelters it from the wind. That's why AirPods don't work as a recorder on the bike.

## Would I recommend it?

The aesthetics of the button don't help either. It looks like you're wearing a zip-tie on your finger rather than something you might mistake for a piece of jewellery, like an Oura ring. That said, capturing thoughts hands-free on a bike and having them handled by the time I'm home is exactly what I wanted. I've found it to be incredibly useful over the last 6-8 weeks, so yes, for this use case I totally recommend it.